Thursday, March 1, 2012

I came to Jeff Minter’s oeuvre late, around the time of the XBLA release of Space Giraffe. I mention this not (only) to display the depths of my ignorance, but to provide context: there’s more to love in Gridrunner [$0.99] than just nostalgia. For anyone who missed the heyday of the Commodore 64, Minter’s iOS titles might seem a bit unapproachable, but consider giving them a shot – they might surprise you.

Gridrunner wears its roots proudly, but it isn’t a dogmatically faithful recreation of the 1982 original. Or, rather, it isn’t only that: both the Vic-20 and Commodore 64 version of the title are present here as optional modes. The real fun is in the remake, which takes the things that made Gridrunner great from the start and runs with them. The grid and its cruel lasers, the little ship that faces them down alone, the flying droids and the missile pods they leave behind – all these things return. This time they bring along retina graphics, power ups, new foes and moments of bullet-pulsing glory.

This isn’t the first time that Minter has revisited Gridrunner—it’s the third in the last decade alone. Gridrunner++ was released in 2002 and Gridrunner Revolution came out in 2009. Both brought in big changes. They were trippy, colorful departures, introducing features like score multipliers and ship rotation. This new iteration hews a little closer to the original, but Minter has clearly brought in much of the game design wisdom he’s picked up in the interim. The resulting game looks and plays like the original – assuming your memories of the original come with a big helping of rose-tinted nostalgia.